ON THE

POETICAL WORKS

OF

MR. WILLIAM COLLINS.

THE different species of Poetry may be reduced under two comprehensive classes. The first includes all in which the charms of verse are made use of, to illustrate subjects which in their own nature are affecting or interesting. Such are Didactic and Dramatic compositions. Such is the Epic, where a story, a series of adventures, carries the reader on through the impulse of curiosity, and loses not its interest intirely even if translated into Prose. Such are descriptions of natural objects, where the mind. recognizes with pleasure the forms and colouring it

admires in the various scenes and productions of the visible world. Such is, also, that moral painting of men and manners, that spontaneously approves itself to the spirit of observation, and the moral sense, that more or less are implanted in the breast of every man. Hence the Essays and Epistles of POPE have been popular among all that read. A lively representation of the passions, particularly those of Love, Terror, and Pity, commands the attention even of those who are but indifferent judges of the vehicle in which it may be conveyed. The other class consists of what may be called pure Poetry, or Poetry in the abstract. It is conversant with an imaginary world, peopled with beings of its own creation. It deals in splendid imagery, bold fiction, and allegorical personages. It is necessarily obscure to a certain degree; because, having to do chiefly with ideas generated within the mind, it cannot be at all comperhended by any whose intellect has not been exercised in similar contemplations; while the conceptions of the Poet (often highly metaphysical) are ren

dered still more remote from common apprehension by the figurative phrase in which they are clothed. All that is properly Lyric Poetry is of this kind. It depends for effect on the harmony of the verse, which must be modulated with the nicest care; and on a felicity of expression, rather than a fullness of thought. An Epic Poem may be compared to a piece of massy plate finely wrought; it is intrinsically valuable, though its value is much increased by the work bestowed upon it. An Ode, like a delicate piece of silver filligree, receives in a manner all its value from the art and curiosity of the workmanship. Hence Lyric Poetry will very seldom bear translation, which is a kind of melting-down of a Poem, and reducing it to the sterling value of the matter contained in it. Who can read the greatest part of the Odes of HORACE in any translation that has yet appeared ? and who, but a native of France, reads, what a native of France reads with rapture, the Odes of JEAN BAPTISTE ROUSSEAU?-Nor can this species of

Poetry, though most answering to SHAKESPEAR'S definition, as it gives to airy nothing a local habitation and a name, ever be popular. The substratum, if I may so express myself, or subject matter, which every composition must have, is, in a Poem of this kind, so extremely slender, that it requires not only art, but a certain artifice of construction, to work it up into a beautiful piece; and to judge of or relish such a composition requires a practised ear, and a taste formed by elegant reading. MOLIERE, it is said, used to submit his Comedies to the criticism of an old woman; but the most beautiful Ode will only please those who, by being long conversant with the best models of Poetry in a polished age, have acquired a scientific and perhaps, in some degree, a factitious taste.

COLLINS, amongst our English Authors, has cultivated the Lyric Muse with peculiar felicity; his works are small in bulk, but highly finished; and have deservedly gained him a respectable rank amongst our minor Poets. His characteristics are tenderness,

tinged with melancholy, beautiful imagery, a fondness for allegory and abstract ideas, purity and chasteness of sentiment, and an exquisite ear for harmony. In his endeavours to embody the fleeting forms of mind, and clothe them with correspondent imagery, he is not unfrequently obscure; but even when obscure, the reader, who possesses congenial feelings, is not ill pleased to find his faculties put upon the stretch in the search of those sublime ideas, which are apt, from their shadowy nature, to elude the grasp of the mind.

COLLINS has written but little, and is said, probably with truth, to have been inclined to indolence; but it is likewise true that the man of fine imagination who draws his productions from the stores of his own mind, ought to have large allowance made before this accusation is fixed upon him. A real Poet must always appear indolent to the man of the world. The alacrity and method of business is not to be expected in his occupation. His mind works in silence, and exhausts itself with the various emotions which